The Racialized Situation of Vandalism and Crime

Here is another segment from John Quinones excellent ABC 20/20 series titled “What Would You Do?” — a series that, in essence, conducts situationist experiments through hidden-camera scenarios (in consultation with renowned social psychologist John Dovidio).

5 Responses to “The Racialized Situation of Vandalism and Crime”

As trial consultants, we see racial bias up close and personal as we do pre-trial research. It’s tough to swallow when you have litigation parties who simply ‘happen’ to be African American or Muslim or some other minority toward whom mock jurors have antipathy.

More recently, we’re seeing an increase in bias toward those who are “not us” in one way or another. We write about this on our blog (The Jury Room) and in articles available for download on our website (http://www.keenetrial.com/). I think what the 20/20 series does is shows us how, when we are not aware we are being watched, we behave. And it often isn’t pretty.

What we see in our work is that the more NON-salient the ethnicity/race of the litigant is to case facts, the more bias we see. It’s counter-intuitive in some ways but not in others. NON-salient ethnicity/race does not alert us to be wary of our biases and so we act out of stereotypes and pre-existing beliefs/biases rather than carefully considering facts.

[…] Interactions,” “The Situation of Prejudice: Us vs. Them? or Them Is Us?” and “The Racialized Situation of Vandalism and Crime,” each of which contains a sizable list of other related Situationist posts. Possibly […]

[…] * * * To review a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Journalists as Social Psychologists & Social Psychologists as Entertainers,” “The Situation of Bystanders,” “The Situation of Racial Profiling,” “The Situation of Black and White,” “He’s a Banana-Eating Monkey, but I’m Not a Racist,” “The Legal Situation of the Underclass,” “Why Race May Influence Us Even When We “Know” It Doesn’t,” “Jennifer Eberhardt’s “Pol… Go to Source […]